Design for life

After watching a short film about Don Norman and his doors, I laid a broad hint on my family and admirers to buy me a copy of The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. Which is available on Amazon but costing rather more than 0.01c.  It was first published  as The Psychology of Everyday Things and acquired the acronym POET.  But his editor at Basic Books told Norman that the title was badly designed because it would get shelved in the Psychology section and browsing buyers would be better served if he s/Psychology/Design/ and the book was republished as DOET.  And it was so. Then I thought it might be available in the library at The Institute. And it was so; and I've been reading with a sense of resonance and B'god Whistler I wish I'd said that.

The Institute?  I met crap design causing them mortification before I ever worked there. They won a national competition to launch a new course in Bioinformatics and I was part of the committee sent down to see if the course they cobbled together was really up to scratch and could be accredited by the appropriate central authority.  We committee-chaps (nearly half women!) were put up in the local hotel and wined and dined the night before, but started in to a day's work the following morning. Assembled in the most presentably high-tech small lecture theatre, we were scheduled to listen to an extensive round of presentations about how technically competent the course and its lecturers would make the students. But nobody in the room could switch on the projector! Oooh irony. But it wasn't really their fault so much as the projector being poorly designed. When you switched it on, nothing happened, so the temptation was to press the on/go button again  . . . which switched it off.  An impatient third press started the initialisation procedure again but there was no external signal from the box that the signal has been received and was being acted upon . . . please be patient.  Not even an audible click. The IT guy was called and sorted it out: mainly by making everyone sit down and stop doing things.  We did give them appro for the course.

Now I work there and my office, which I share with two others, looks out over an extensive view of . . . the canteen.  I never look out, because I'm always too busy at my desk, but I know when it's Friday because the smell of fried fish roils in from the kitchen. I nip out there several times a day to get hot water for tea and have to go through a pair of double doors that open only one way. They are fire-doors, so have a little crack-occluding flange on one of the doors: when they are properly closed there is no draught to feed the fire. But people are always opening the wrong door, so that when they close automatically the flange-door closes last and so doesn't close properly. We are a small community, you'd think that 6 months into the new academic year everyone would have twigged how to open the right door so that they both close properly. But no, the design makes it took difficult for ordinarily intelligent folk.  It's up to me, because I'm the only person who cares/notices to reshuffle the doors when I go through.  They don't pay me enough!

On the other hand my Toyota Yaris has a really obvious design feature in the sound system - a conspicuous slot above the radio tuner than cried out for a CD to be inserted.  As Norman points out in his book, slots are for inserting things into.  The fact that I couldn't see it was mainly because I grew up in an era before CDs and cars came together.

powaqqatsi

When I started work at The Institute just over 3 years ago, we acquired a red Toyota Yaris, low mileage, one lady owner and it has been transporting me back and forth the 40km to work and back home in the evening. When I'm not piling the motor up a ditch, that is. I don't really pay much attention to cars [or clothes, haircuts, watches and other fashion accessories] but there are some features on the Yaris that are neat:  there's a little bucket in the door handle that is really convenient for road-toll coins; there's a glove-compartment on the dashboard behind the steering wheel where I can dump petrol receipts, a penknife and a spare pair of socks [black wool with dark blue clocks on them, naturally].

Fashion accessories are those things that you don't really need but which you are persuaded, by advertising or peer-pressure or 'normality', are desirable - nobody cares tuppence about cuff-links nowadays, but they were until recently essential parts of normal dress for blokes.  I was writing about how, when Dau.I and Dau.II were growing up, I'd gone mad about buying CDs and then DVDs. I must have a couple of hundred of each.  My laptop used to have a CD/DVD player and indeed we had a dedicated DVD projector at one time.  But, iTunes and The Cloud and Youtube mean that I don't need music or film as a physical plastic disc anymore. Indeed they are now wholly redundant because I lack the machine to make them play; they are as useless and outmoded as my extensive vinyl collection of Brahms, Brubeck and Bob Dylan.  A few weeks ago, Dau.II came to visit and she presented me with a CD containing the sound-track for the film Powaqqatsi the sequel to Koyaanisqqatsi. Don't bother unless you like Philip Glass but these pretentiously intellectual video extravaganzas are my sort of film: a) pretentiously intellectual b) absent car-chases, kalashnikovs c) nice to look at.  Glass and Co don't play it for laughs, but you can't have everything.
Dau.II "I thought you'd like this soundtrack for Powaqqatsi"
Self "Thanks, I really loved this first one but the sequel is excellent also in it's own way"
Self "But you know I lack the ability to play this medium, except on the CD/Radio system in the kitchen"
Dau.II "What about the car, y'daft pillock?"
Self "What about it? it's only got a radio"
Dau.II (patiently) "Have you noticed the CD sized slot in the housing just above the radio . . ."

These last few weeks I've been driving down to the Waterford Coast on Sunday afternoons to do boy's-night-in with my father-in-law aka Pat-the-Salt. Sunday afternoon is a wireless desert in Ireland - unless you are mad about sport.  The nation would be fitter and healthier if they just had a loop broadcasting on weekend afternoons: "Shift your sorry ass away from the wireless and go participate in the some sport rather than listening to this stuff." ANNYway, with a choice between commentary on a GAA football match on one channel and club rugby on the other I was about  to choose Channel 3 = OFF when I remembered the Powaqqatsi. The slot inhaled the CD and music blared forth. I really love the first track in Powaqqatsi: it's a got a catchy percussive beat with signalling whistles which reminds me of my days as a barely functional sambista in a rather lively Samba School in Dublin. The journey flew by in a heart-beat.

Last Post GE16

When it comes to films, I'm not great on mindless violence but I'm made even more uncomfortable by suspense - unless it's old-fashioned black&white Hitchcock.  But I can handle a certain amount of that in politics. I know you have been waiting, waiting, waiting for two whole days to hear how things panned out in Longford-Westmeath and who exactly filled the last two seats in the Irish Parliamentary elections. Would Willie Penrose, Labour Party stalwart, hold his seat; or would he be replaced by a rougher form of Left by electing a Sinn Féin deputy in his place?  As I explained on Wednesday, after two full recounts it looked like Willie Penrose was bottom of the heap in a knife-edge contest where four closely ranked candidates were contesting two seats. The last chap elected had a small surplus (N=64) over quota and the distribution of these votes travelled left:

which meant that Penrose went from being 19 behind Bannon to being 6 ahead. Phew! With that sorted, Bannon was eliminated and his surplus went a) primarily to the other Fine Gaeler b) far more to Labour than to Sinn Féin and that meant that Penrose surged past the more radical Hogan.

If it had been the other way round in Round 14, with Penrose eliminated, his surplus would have gone disproportionately left to Hogan, so either way Bannon the second ranked FG would have failed in his bid.  It took the full of five days to count the votes and allocate them in the way we have decided is fair.  Politics-wonks with the stomach for the details of the process who don't suffer from math-anxiety may, with advantage, check out a report on the element of chance in Irish Elections. The elimination of Bannon means that, for the first time in the history of the state, there is nobody looking out for the interests of Co. Longford in the Dáil. Huzzah!  Let's have more candidates who are representing the country in the national legislative body rather than scratching the backs of his neighbors.  Citizens of Longford: Thanks for taking one for the team.

El Jefe

We are founder members of the Blackstairs Film Society which meets one weekend night a month during the Winter [Sep-Apr] Season.  I've mentioned this cultural lifeline before.  It's a lot more convenient than the Tinahely Film Group which we only go to occasionally.  They've been running in Tinahely since the days of 16mm film-stock and have a pee-break in the middle of the film - to recharge the wine glasses and critique the current film with your neighbours.  Originally this was to fill the time while the reels were changed but the members insisted on retaining the custom when DVDs replaced 16mm. Blackstairs is run by a committee who select films from a limited stock supplied by Access Cinema Ireland.  Access Cinema "Our mission is to provide all audiences throughout Ireland with access to the best of Irish, world and independent cinema, via our national network of non-profit and voluntary organisations.".  It's a nice little earner for the chaps mediating between Hollywood and Little People in rural Ireland [that would be Leprechauns?].

A few years ago, the BFS committee decided to show Babette's Feast, a gorgeous and funny 1987 film about food melting Calvinist hearts. They were inspired to serve food during the film and it was a mighty success.  The audience on Film night can be very thin if it's miserable weather and they are showing a docudrama about a neurosurgical hospital in Cambodia but there were loadsa punters for Babette.  It was only partly because the BFS demographic can remember 1987. The following year, they did the same idea with Like Water Like Chocolate aka Como agua para chocolate a magical-realist Mexican film from 1992. And last year we had dahl and chapattis with The Lunchbox.  It is a bread-winner for the Society which is limping along barely solvent from year to year.

This weekend, we were served tostadas, empanadas, and cubanos with Chef, a 2014 film [trailer] [nother trailer] starring Jon Favreau and Scarlett Johnansen, with Dustin Hoffman and Robert Downey Jr. in minor-but-brilliant roles. It's a pretty straight-forward feel-good movie about a Chef who is sacked from his position at a high-profile LA restaurant and redeems himself and his relationships by working a taco-truck from Miami to Los Angeles.  The chef's son goes along for the ride and comes to realise that the catering trade is hard, hot, work but rewarding if you give it your all. Same as teaching in The Institute except that I don't eat my creations.  I was telling Dau.II aka Cookie about the film but she said she'd seen it already "on the internet"; I bet she didn't get free empanadas with it, though. We both agreed that it was stupid for Scarlett to be serving food with her silky blonde locks dipping into everything: could she not tie it back?  We insist that the long-hairs to do that in the labs in The Institute; it's safer.

Chef was okay, no more. Dustin Hoffman is great as always but the sound-quality was not so good; we could have done with sub-titles. It doesn't help that the kid talks with his mouthful all the time: yes, yes, I realise it's a metaphor about accepting the father's world. The Cuban music is catchy but often loud enough to drown out important fragments of dialogue.  The end is IMO a cop-out but you may go see it so I won't do a spoiler now.

pushmi-pullyu

Hugh Lofting was an engineer who served in the Irish Guards during WWI and saw loathsome things and probably did some too. News from the front was either "too horrible or too dull" to write home about and so he wrote illustrated stories for his children back home in Blighty. In the 1920s, these were gathered into a book called The Story of Dr Doolittle, which spawned a series of books about this Doctor who could talk to animals.  One of his pals was the pushmi-pullyu which was a two-headed llama-like creature that could go either way, If if you angle things judiciously you can create a temporary pushmi-pullyu [L] to send out by snapchat.  Dr Doolittle was the kind of book we still had to read in the 1950s and 1960s, because they were 'mostly harmless' and rather quaintly Victorian.  I guess my father, born in 1917, had those books when they were first published and passed them, or at least the idea of them, down to us. Paddy Fermor, famous long-distance chap, also served in the Irish Guards - in the next WWII war.

I was thinking about this after watching this short video about how crappy design, in this case of doors, can drive you bonkers. If there is a graspable handle on the side of a door that you have to push, then it's poorly designed. There are several of them in The Institute. In my Portuguese days, I had an anglophone's confusion with a lot of doors because the Portuguese for Pull is Puxe [pronounced pushe) - Push is Empurre.  But we can't expect Portuguese to reverse the meaning: there are a bazillion Brazilians who don't speak English. One class of Brazilians who do speak English are Air Traffic Controllers - because all ATCs speak English. It's become the universal language of flight even if the pilot and his ATC are cousins who both speak Tagalog, on the air in the air they assume English - not least because other pilots in the holding pattern are listening.  If there is any possibility of confusion, because of static or poor diction, they use the NATO phonetic alphabet to spell stuff out. That's Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu.  There are numerous other phonetic alphabets but this is the one to learn in case you're ever on a flight and both pilots get mortal sick from eating fish. The cockney alphabet - A for 'orses; Beef or mutton; C for miles - is a send-up.

I've got a birthday coming up: The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman.

Ireland: the end of Centre-Left

The Irish Election of last Friday is all over bar the shouting and tears. 156/158 seats are filled and two remain undecided.

That indecision lies in Longford-Westmeath a 4-seat constituency plunk in the middle of the country and full of small towns and farmers.  The local Fianna Fáil magnate Robert Troy was comfortably elected on the 1st Count. The minority interest candidates were eliminated in turn: Independent Donal Jackson scrabbled just 53 votes and Stephanie Healy [no relation!] of the DDI-woowah alliance got 132.  More serious candidates went, one after the other, and their votes redistributed until only two 'Longford' candidates remained: one for each of the major parties and having less than 1% in the vote difference.  It was eventually agreed that Connie Gerety-Quinn FF was Out and her votes sorted preferentially to James Bannon FG, despite the fact that he was from The Other Party.  Voting local is more important in Ireland than voting for policy.  Although everyone agrees that you can't slip a piece of toilet paper between the political policies of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

But poor Mr Bannon, on whose shoulders the hopes of Longford now exclusively lie rest [be very careful using the word lie, lying, liar in the context of Pols - it's not always true], is looking pointedly at the dustbin of history. "Boxer" Moran, the Independent Alliance leftie, is assured of the 2nd seat and now we have four men [all men!] in contention for 2 remaining seats.  It looks like Burke FG and Hogan SF will snag them but Willie Penrose has asked for a complete recount because he is only 19 votes adrift from Bannon. The fact that he is even thinking about recounting, with both Penrose and Bannon being 300 votes behind the obvious taker of the 4th and final seat, shows just how fallible the system is known to be.  You're asking human beings to tally up thousands and thousands of tea-towel sized ballot papers without getting confused, losing count or losing the will to live. If Penrose fails in his bid here, that will leave Labour with only 6 TDs in parliament - down from 33 - and losing the speaking rights that accrue to parties with at least 7 members. If Burke FG is elected it will slide Fine Gael from N=49 over the mystical 50 members line. With Fianna Fáil polling 44, and 44+50=94 will make a stable coalition (80 seats will be enough) that will suit a majority of the electorate.  It's not going to happen because, as my pal Kevin Byrne pointed out, the tribalism of the civil war is still not resolved.

Note added in press: The point about the recount is that, under the Irish STV system, you have to eliminate the bottom candidate and redistribute their votes until their are no more candidates to eliminate.  So the fight is between Bannon FG at 7077 and Penrose Lab at 7058.  Rumour has it that Penrose is a handful ahead on the recount.  But why should that count be privileged above the first one?  Will it be like children in a playground where one asks "Best of three?".  If Bannon is eliminated most of his transfers with go to party-pal Burke but  the rest are more likely to go to softish-left Labour than hardish-left Sinn Féin and it just takes 5% to lift Penrose (Lab) above Hogan (SF)

Autotelic

Autotelic adj. - having a purpose in and not apart from itself.

I was dealing with a big bruise on Pat the Salt's arm that didn't seem to have a rational explanation and a fragment of poetry, inaccurately remembered, knocked persistently on my mind. As you do, I googled the phrase and after several poor/wrong hits found:

Where did the blood comes from?

Before I bit, before I sucked,

The red meat, the blood was there

Nourishing sweetly the roots of hair.

Two things about this track-down surprised me.  1) that the writer was RS Thomas and 2) the only source of this work (and his entire oeuvre?) on-line is a Google book scan of his Complete Works 1945-1990. When I was growing up, Thomas had a very high profile in the world of 20thC English language poetry - not English poetry because he was emphatically and decisively Welsh, although also a priest in the Anglican communion. It's St. David's Day Dydd Gŵyl Dewi today! As a teenager, Thomas's simple and austere poems resonated with my failure to fit in the world I was passing through but barely engaged with. I was dreamy and lonely and romantic and wrote poetry.  At one stage, when I was about 16/17, I bundled up a good handful of the verse which I had banged out on an old portable Olivetti typewriter [remember them?] and sent it to RS Thomas with a request for an opinion. A couple of weeks later, they were returned with a polite note saying that he'd read them with care but couldn't find anything in there that sang to him.  I accepted a poet's verdict, dumped the whole sheaf into an incinerator and set fire to it. Even now I don't regret the decision because it helped me shuffle out from under a cloud of self-pity and start to pay attention to what was happening around me.  Round about the same time, perhaps not coincidentally, I discovered science and put poetry . . . on the back-burner.

What strikes me now is a certain amount of surprise that I had torn all this stuff out of my soul and put on paper and then . . . agreed with someone else that it was mostly rubbish. In growing up I've shifted a bit from requiring external validation to paying more attention to my internal qualitometer.  I wish I could tell my younger self that much.  More importantly. and with more chance of success [because my younger self is loonngg gone] I wish I could get my students at The Institute to write their reports in the best way possible without caring if I give them 8/10 or 7/10.  They could become more autotelic - driven to do what they do by an internal compass rather than seeking and accepting external validation.

I thought all that because I picked up a link on kottke.org flagging a nice little movie-clip about Vincent van Gogh called Painting in the Dark.  If you want to achieve 'Flow' (in the sense of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s cult book Flow: the psychology of optimal experience) you’ve got to dance like nobody’s watchin’ [prev], run your heart out or, in my case, blog like nobody's readin'. Which, after all my Russian readers left in a body last month, is almost true.